Bricolage

The internet does weird things to how we are perceived and how we interact socially. Two recent examples:

1. A New Zealander living in Scotland has contacted me through YouTube (where I have added a few Kiwi music videos to a personal playlist) hoping to meet a fellow Kiwi expat: "i'm from xx, north island, where r u from?" .. Denmark? Maybe I should start adding a couple of Danish tracks to that playlist of mine .. nah.
2. Facebook sent me a message the other day. "Suggest friends for XYZ!" Today the site sent me another message: "Keep in touch with your friends! Leave a wall message for XYZ!" XYZ, a distant member of my extended family, passed away from cancer a month ago. Needless to say, the messages made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I can only imagine what it must feel like for her close relatives to be sent these messages and pushy 'reminders'.

Following on from that, I have been following a message board thread about personal identity with some interest. The thread started with a newspaper article talking about "late-blooming lesbians". The thread meandered through discussions on bisexuality, marriage and queer politics - but the one post which made me stop in my tracks asked about the idea of "always having known myself". Can we really, really lay claim to having a stable identity throughout our lives? One of my all-time favourite quotes is from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses:

I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

I like to think that our identity is an amalgam of our experiences and a select number of personal traits. I cannot lay claim to "always having known" something about myself, because "always" is a really complicated word. My three-year-old self had a radically different way of perceiving and naming things than my twenty-five year-old self or even thirty-four year old self. I feel at peace with that idea of a fluid sense of Self, a bricolage-like identity, which keeps shifting and moving towards untravelled worlds. I feel significantly less at ease with always having been the same person.

Getting all this from a thread which was basically "u all suck an i'm rite" isn't bad.

While I remember, I'm tentatively planning an escape a holiday to Denmark. I need to recharge my batteries and I miss people. I don't know any dates yet (although it'll probably be late October/early November), but I just thought I'd give a bit of advance notice !

Friday Linkage

Some linkage for you on a Friday night:

• Sketch to Screen - The Art of Hollywood Costume Design
• A knitted calendar - you rip out the days as they pass. Oddly poetic.
• I'm not a huge fan of television as a rule, but I love how this TV set is displayed.
• Historic Crafts currently looking at spinning, weaving and dyeing.
• The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
• Ask A Real Musician: Five Metal Singers. A classically trained singer listens to five very distinct metal singers. A really interesting read.
• Is England the most overcrowded country in Europe? How to use statistics in a proper way.
• Heja Sverige - a really interesting editorial from a Swedish newspaper (warning: it's in Swedish and deals with Scandinavian politics!)
• "No, You Can't Pick My Brain?" - I found this via my mate Ras who works as pro photographer in Seattle and who is fed up with a certain kind of people asking for a certain kind of advice. I can really relate to both Ras and the brain-picked article writer. And I now identify as a popcorn machine. Pop. Pop.

Self-Stitched September round-up: the Haematite scarf/shawl worn yesterday. My Millbrook cardigan was worn today. It's rather warm in Glasgow at the moment which makes SSS extra interesting..

PS We went to the Joseph Beuys exhibition today. I didn't like it much - I thought it was simultaneously too masculine and too infantile and too tied to Beuys' own myth-making. We then went upstairs to Aspects of Scottish Art 1860-1910 and whilst some of the art was too chocolate-box for me, I enjoyed it more than I did Beuys. You can try to lead this girl to Fluxus, but she does like her early 20th C art. Sigh.

Self-Stitched September: One

I hate knitting sleeves. Everything zips along nicely and then I get to the sleeves and my will to live dies. I think I have twigged why I hate knitting sleeves.

Look at the photo. I'm wearing a Tangled Yoke Cardigan. It was originally knitted by Ms Old Maiden Aunt but it was gifted to me earlier this year. Lilith had knitted extra long sleeves because she likes having cosy hands. Look again. The sleeve is a full inch too short for me, if not more.

I have monkey arms, in other words. I already knew I had long legs because I struggle to find trousers long enough, but I never thought about my arms being long. Still, it explains my hatred of knitting sleeves - I have to knit them extra-extra-long and I had no idea.

Oh, by the way:

'I, Karie Bookish, sign up as a participant of Self-Stitched-September. I endeavour to wear handmade item(s) of clothing/accessories/ jewellery every day for the duration of September 2010'.

Yes, Virginia, I have chosen to participate in Self-Stitched September. I might not photograph every outfit I am wearing every day, nor will I blog my outfit every day (that way madness and narcissism lie) but when I do post, I'll link to the relevant handmade items on my Rav account (or otherwise document which items I have worn). It'll be interesting, although I'm still trying to figure out why I am participating.

• I want to wear handmade items more often (although I already do this)?
• I want to mix up the handmade items I wear (more likely)?
• I cannot resist a good meme?

So, today I'm wearing the Tangled Yoke Cardigan and my Echo Flower scarf/shawl. Let Self-Stitched September commence!

Journeys

Yesterday my colleague and good friend LH took me to the wonderful The Royal Edinburgh Repository and Self Aid Society on Castle Street. Kate Davies has written a whole post on it (and weaves in a bit of Jane Austen too), but nothing prepared me for the actual shop. It reminded me of those summers when I would pretend to be Anglican for one day. I helped out in the home produce stall at the annual summer feté at the Anglican Church in Copenhagen - mostly as a favour to friends, but also because I could grab some really tasty homemade jam and sneak off with awesome homemade cakes (and cheap books). The shop was filled with all sorts of homemade goodies: jams, cakes, fudge .. oh, and knitting.

Oh, but the knitting. I had several moments of weak knees and uncontrollable knitterly glee. Plenty of pretty baby garments, practical gloves and neat scarves .. and then you would uncover one Shetland shawl after another. One-ply Shetland shawls - yes, cobweb Shetland shawls. The most beautiful, astounding things you could ever want to see in your entire life.

LH is holding one in the photo. I think at this point the two shop assistants had decided that we were bonkers, but harmless.

They pulled out more things for us to marvel at: fair-isle gloves and delicate lace scarves. I looked at prices and my heart nearly broke: for a full-size cobweb Shetland shawl (similar to the bottom shawl) the shop asked £75 (a quick price comparison). It is heart-breaking to see people of exquisite skill selling their handiwork at such a price - it is devaluating their work, their skill and their time - and I wonder why a centrally-placed Edinburgh shop is selling the shawls at such a low price? Does this reflect the market for such shawls or does it reflect that they are unsure about how to price the items?

LH said something profound about knitting journeys yesterday and I have been thinking about her words. Whilst I was physically taking my knitting on a journey yesterday, I began thinking about how knitting is also taking me for a journey.I am somewhere very different to where I am just a few years ago when I got back into knitting and that journey has only just begun.

In my head I'm playing around with a complex set of 'identity markers' and I am trying to work them out through knitting. I am getting increasingly interested in my knitting heritage (primary Danish and Faroese, of course, but with several detours because I am essentially a flâneur) as well as British textile history. I like to think of knitting as something intensely personal - the yarn runs through our hands and we touch every millimetre of the material we are creating - and I want my knitting to reflect me whoever I am becoming.

And to keep me warm and cosy so I will not die during the forthcoming Scottish winter. My cardigan's coming on nicely, non?

DK: Knit

DK: Knit is an exhibition of contemporary knitwear design by graduates from the Kolding School of Design currently on display at the Danish Cultural Institute in Edinburgh. Being both of the knitterly and the Danish persuasion, I thought I might as well check it out. Unsurprisingly, most of the pieces are machine-knitted and at a fairly fine gauge. Some pieces explore garment construction (like the piece shown left), other pieces explore the idea of "fabric". One particular piece resembles a big pink bath sponge plunged on the floor - I can admire the skill in its construction whilst at the same time reject its aesthetic, can't I? - whilst another piece looks like an upmarket version of IKEA curtains (and uses the same stitch pattern as the Summit Shawl).

My favourite pieces are the ones which add twists to so-called classic knitting: items that acknowledge their debt to generations past whilst still trying to pave the way forward.

Hans-Christian Madsen has two pieces included in the DK: Knit exhibition and I really liked both. My favourite was the pullover shown right: a traditional Icelandic yoked sweater in subtle colours - but when you get closer, you can see that the colourwork yoke incorporates unusual materials.The surface is broken up - but by texture rather than colour.

Katarina i Geil also draws upon knitting traditions - most obviously from her native Faroe Islands - but uses cables in a really organic, free-flowing way. I am also impressed by her use of embellishment and contrasting texture. One piece is handknitted(?) in rustic wool with clever crochet ornaments in silk. Sadly my photos has not turned out well nor does she have any web presence, so you will have take me at my word.

For a handknitter, DK:Knit is not the most inspiring exhibition. I can see some possibilities in the play with surface textures, but I think fashion students will find it more worthwhile. I did enjoy my chat with the friendly staff and I was alerted to a new Danish bakery in Edinburgh. Mmm, tebirkes!

The knitterly content continues tomorrow..

Yes, there is more. Oh yes, there is more.

Sunday Sunday

Sunday, Sunday here again a walk in the park.. The day started with me drinking my morning tea whilst listening to BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour where I was informed that knitting was a "post-modern, ultra-chic habit adopted by the very, very cool." So now we know.

Then I began preparing for the Barcelona skirt sewing demonstration I'm doing Wednesday. I cut out the pattern pieces, read the instructions, and then laughed with relief. The skirt is very easy - just three pieces plus zipper and lining - and although I've not done much dress-making in the last fifteen years, I am confident I am not going to mess this up. Famous last words, of course.

The afternoon was spent in the communal garden. We live in a Victorian tenement flat and we share our garden with four other blocks. The plan is to make our communal garden sustainable and organic - today we attended a workshop on turning a tenement garden into a place to grow food (alongside all the other needs it has to fulfil: drying space, bicycle sheds, bin sheds, recreational space etc). A lot of the residents realised that edible plants were already growing in the garden - some planned (like potatoes, various herbs and strawberries) and some rather unplanned (St. John's Wort, barley and gentian). We discussed getting some fruit trees whilst having herbal tea and cake under the existing Cypress trees.

At this point I felt very middle-class.

Then D & I meant to go blackberry picking. Well, bramble picking since they call blackberries brambles here in Scotland. As you can see, though, the berries are not quite ripe yet (neither are the elderberries). So I went for a little walk through our neighbourhood instead.

The North Kelvin Meadow is just around the corner from our flat. There is a short video posted on its site which lets you see the beautiful space for itself - it is basically a waste ground between tenements which has been "adopted" by local people. There are tiny allotments on the site now but mostly it functions as breathing space for local wildlife and as a "wild" natural habitat in the middle of a busy city. I like looking at the ex-whiskey barrels that have become micro-allotments. Actually, I like spending time there, full stop. The Meadow is very peaceful.

(As you can imagine, though, developers are quite keen on getting their hands on the Meadow (it is right in Glasgow's prime property area), so there is an ongoing campaign to let the Meadow remain a meadow.)

On a personal note, I went for a walk (and a good cry) because I had some very sad news from Denmark. Sometimes I feel very far away from family & friends, and I am unable to travel back right now (for various reasons). It makes me feel powerless and downright awful. I love Glasgow - it feels more like home than anywhere else I have ever lived - but sometimes I do wish I still lived in Denmark. It would make moments like this one a bit easier to handle.